Prayers in Ink
by Caitriona3
Summary: Darcy gets a tattoo - not for fun...not for kicks...but because she needed to keep a piece of them with her.


_Author's Note – from a prompt on tumblr…_ _of-ipods-and-interns prompted: "Darcy has a secret tattoo she doesn't want anyone to know about." This is what I came up with, and I might have to adopt it as headcanon._

**Prayers in Ink**

Tattoos are not usually her thing.

It's not that she doesn't like them. She's seen some sexy guys pull off the whole inked look in a perfectly drool-worthy fashion.

But for her? On her skin? That would be a no.

First off, tattoos require pain. Needles and ink and inflammation…even the whole air gun idea…no matter how you phrased it, it all ended up spelling one thing – it takes pain to get a tattoo. The prettier or more intricate ones required even more pain than the basic stuff. She's been accused of being a lot of things, but a masochist is not one of them. Pain is not her friend. The very idea of signing up, and worse _paying_ good money, for someone else to cause her pain? Oh, please, she has so many other ways to spend the same amount of money.

Secondly…they're pretty permanent. Okay, yes, there are ways to remove tattoos, but they also require pain – see her previous point – and why? If you are going to go through the pain of marking yourself, why would you bother getting it removed? You might as well go uncommitted and do a temp. Back to the permanent thing – putting that pretty butterfly near your ankle sounds like a great idea when you're an eighteen-year-old, just escaped from the parentals college newbie. What if five years down the road you've decided butterflies are wimpy bugs and you are totally not a wimp? Hello tattoo removal and more pain.

The third reason she's avoided getting a tattoo before is placement. Where do you put it? She's not exactly the exhibitionist type…except where she can't avoid it. Her anatomy isn't really built for stealth, though she does her best with sweaters and jackets and scarves. Can she just say again how thrilled she is to live in New York? Almost nobody gives her odd looks for her bulky attire. That's beside the point right now though. If you're going to actually put yourself through the pain, shouldn't you get the tattoo somewhere you can show off? But then again, friends, family, and employers get all kinds of touchy about that. Okay, so hers probably wouldn't…Jane wouldn't notice, Tony wouldn't care, and SHIELD could take a flying leap for all she cared about their opinion.

And yet, here she is.

At a tattoo shop.

Seriously contemplating this.

The idea came to her after one of the team's spectacular, media-worthy victories. Those types of victories meant bruises, burns, and blank looks – great for public relations, but costly in the terms of the team's mental health. She hated seeing the wounded eyes when the team gathered in the media room, not quite ready to face their solitary bedrooms; or at least they weren't ready to leave the team itself. Bruce, still tired from his transformation, slumped in one corner of the couch while Bucky prowled the edge of the room, peering out the windows cautiously. Clint and Natasha perched on the barstools at the west end of the room, an untouched bottle of vodka between them. Steve sat next to Thor, both of them looking like they had lost a little more of the shining optimism that made them larger than life. Tony sat in a chair, hands twitching as his eyes refused to settle on any one spot. It broke her heart to watch them, but she wouldn't leave them. She would stay and help Betty, Jane, and Pepper until all of them were once more settled somewhere – sleeping or something…whatever it took.

The very next morning she broke into Coulson's busy schedule with her idea.

He gave her a look suggesting he could not decide if she was brilliant or crazy.

It should probably scare her…the idea she could read his expressionless expressions so well.

After she finally convinced him that she was serious, he made the arrangements. It would take a few days off and out of sight from her overprotective friends, but he made it work. He even found a former SHIELD agent turned tattoo artist who also happened to be female. She told him he scared her more and more with every miracle. He just twitched an eyebrow and reminded her she was part of the scary.

Now she just had to go through with the plan.

Coulson made two requests. Her tattoo should not be easily identifiable as SHIELD or Avenger related. In addition, it also needed to be discreetly located. She had that covered – it was why she wanted a female artist to begin with. She might not be a total prude, but she did believe in at least a modicum of modesty. She also wanted to keep it a secret…her own personal mark. The tattoo would be on her hip, low enough to be covered by the bottoms of her bathing suit. It would be on the front so she could see it in the mirror.

She wasn't a fighter.

She wasn't a genius.

She wasn't an agent.

That didn't mean a part of her didn't go into every fight…on every mission…with any one of them every single time they left home. Since she could not go with them, she would keep a piece of them with her. It would only be one small strip of letters, the first letter of each name, and it would make no sense to anyone even if they could read the Hebraic script.

Those seven simple symbols would rest on Darcy's skin like a prayer in ink.


End file.
